


It’s me and you (that’s all we have when the world is through)

by supersmashpotatoes



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - The 5th Wave, F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-12
Updated: 2019-07-23
Packaged: 2020-03-01 00:40:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,864
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18789496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/supersmashpotatoes/pseuds/supersmashpotatoes
Summary: Clarke wakes up in a strange home, in astranger’s bed. It’s alarming enough that she’s still alive and kicking, that she isn’t a dead corpse amongst the many littered around the highway. But It’s even more alarming that the bullet wound on her thigh is patched up and her clothes are different and her face is clean for the first time in days. The most alarming, though, is the sound of footsteps padding around beneath her.She hasn’t been somewhere like this in a while now. It’s clean, four painted walls holding her hostage with a door sealing her inside. There is a vanity just to her left, and she can see her own reflection in the spotless mirror, her unbrushed hair and her wide, scared eyes.





	1. An-Other-Human

Clarke wakes up in a strange home, in a  
stranger’s bed. It’s alarming enough that she’s still alive and kicking, that she isn’t a dead corpse amongst the many littered around the highway. But It’s even more alarming that the bullet wound on her thigh is patched up and her clothes are different and her face is clean for the first time in days. The most alarming, though, is the sound of footsteps padding around beneath her.

She hasn’t been somewhere like this in a while now. It’s clean, four painted walls holding her hostage with a door sealing her inside. There is a vanity just to her left, and she can see her own reflection in the spotless mirror, her unbrushed hair and her wide, scared eyes.

-  
-

The door opens with a long, ominous creak. Clarke manages to suppress the shiver that tries to overtake her but she can’t help the minute jolting of her fingertips and the joltering of her eyes beneath the cover of her eyelids that definitely give her up.

“I know you’re awake,” someone says. Clarke feels her finger jump. “Your breathing pattern is highly irregular.”

Clarke refuses to open her eyes. The footsteps come closer. _So what if she dies. So what if she leaves this miserable Earth where her family is dead and all her friends are taken hostage and all she had was a backpack and a gun that was taken away from her. There’s nothing for her here. Absolute, chicken shit, **nothing**._

The blanket is yanked off her. Clarke’s brain scrambles to prepare itself: a knife, sharp; a bullet, quick; a rope, slow. But then there’s none of those things, only a cold hand landing on her thigh, and the sound of the bandages wrapped around it unraveling.

She opens her eyes, turns her head slowly. She looks from the Other, crouched on the floor on her knees, to the Other’s hands, rummaging in a first aid box.

Clarke’s heart thumps loudly in her chest. She can feel it everywhere, in both her ears and in the flesh near the inside of her elbow and at the back of her thighs, where she’s sure the Other would feel it if she were to touch.

“What do you want from me?” She asks. The idea of death is seeming less wanted by the second. She doesn’t want death if it will come only after humiliation and pleading and torture. She doesn’t want to be used as some kind of experiment to finally rid this Earth of whatever few humans it still contains. Nobody wants that for themselves. She’d rather die, right here right now; with her hands around the Other’s throat, and her dignity intact.

The Other looks up at her, slow blinks and pursed lips. She’s not human. Not like the boy in the forest. She’s an Other, just like the imposters who killed her father. Clarke is sure of it.

“Your bandage needs to be changed,” the Other tells her. Her voice is soft, and very human in the way that the Others have somehow been able to mimick. Clarke is tired of wondering how these monsters can do the things they’ve done.

The Other reaches back for her thigh, a new bandage in hand. Clarke swats at it, and the bandage falls to the ground.

The Other pauses, her hands still hanging mid air, and Clarke takes the opportunity presented to her. A growl leaves her mouth and she lunges forward, one hand tangled in the Other’s hair, and crashes on top of her. Adrenaline courses through her veins- she forgets everything, the wound on her thigh and the humanity she’s supposed to possess. Both her hands wrap around the Other’s throat, and she won’t stop, she won’t stop fighting until she squeezes the last of her breath out.

 She knows. She knows of the strength these- these Others have. She’s seen what they can do. She knows that this one can throw her off with one hand and snap her neck with the other in less than two seconds. And maybe it’s what she wants. Well, ofcourse, it’s not what she really wants. But choking her before she goes is the best thing that could come out of this scenario.

Except this one isn’t fighting. Her throat ripples beneath Clarke’s palms, and tears prickle at the edges of her eyes. Previously Clarke might’ve been naïve enough to believe she was human just from how her eyes looked, green and sad and utterly familiar. But she isn’t anymore.

The Other’s neck pushes back against her hold, her head craning back and her eyes rolling in their sockets. “Do it,” she begs, broken and jagged.

Clarke doesn’t immediately let go. She leans forward, tightens her fingers, listens to the faded breathing of the girl beneath her. She was still going to do it. She wasn’t going to take the risk. But then she remembers the boy and the blood on her hands and how even in war when you become a monster and gun everyone at sight killing innocents will never be fine and then she lets go and scrambles away all at once.

“You’re human,” she gasps, watching as the girl curls up into a ball and coughs in between sobs.

The pain in her leg comes back to her sharply. She cries out, clutching at her thigh, and at the sound of her agony the girl on the floor stills. There’s a sniffle, and the rustle of fabric, and then there are arms around Clarke and she is being carried back to bed.

It hurts so much that she goes back to sleep.

And the pain wakes her right back up.

“Just let me help you,” the girl says, quiet. Her hands are back to her thigh, which is now coated in blood. She starts cleaning and dabbing it with antiseptic and Clarke screams through clenched teeth, the pain hot and intense and unlike anything she every felt.

“Where’s my gun?” She asks, when the girl moves to grab the bandage that rolled away before and Clarke gets a chance to catch her breath and toughen up.

“It’s in your bag.”

The girl points somewhere across the room, and Clarke follows her finger to where her bag is, sat neatly next to the door.

“Oh.”


	2. The Problem of Humans

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if you’re here from before, you can skip to viii. Everything prior to that section is exactly the same as it previously was. Sorry for the changes, this is going to be the final format :))).

_i **** ****._

Clarke winces at the ceiling. Before she knows it the wound on her thigh is rewrapped in clean bandages and the girl is sitting at the foot of the bed, head in her hands.

“I’m sorry I choked you,” Clarke slurs, her head lolling on the pillow until she can see her.

The girl doesn’t reply except for an irritable huff, her hand moving to caress her own neck.

“What’s your name?” Clarke tries again, “My name’s Clarke.”

“Lexa.”

“What kind of name is that,” Clarke wonders, despite her attempts to be polite. She squints at Lexa’s hunched back. “A very suspicious name.”

Lexa looks up at her, her entire face blank; a doubtful imitation of humanity- “It’s a nickname. My real name’s Alexa.”

Clarke hums, “I like Alexa better. Less different. M’normal.”

“You should drink some water, before you rest.”

Lexa gets up, out of Clarke’s line of vision and then back, with a glass in her hands, presumably filled with water. Clarke really can’t say anything for sure right now.

She drinks it.

-  
-

Clarke wakes up slowly. It takes a moment before her vision is rid of blur and the dull throb of the wound on her thigh comes back. She’s been shot. By an Other. Then taken care of. By a human.

Her senses come back to her one by one. Although she has no idea how long she’s slept she knows it was a long time. She hadn’t gotten a good night’s sleep in- it must’ve been around two weeks now. Three hours a day at the most- maybe four if she’s feeling risky.

There is a continuous sound coming from outside the window. It’s rythmic, a  _thump_ , followed by clatter. Then a pause.  _Thump_ , clatter. Pause.

Clarke carefully descends from the bed. She tests her injured leg first, puts a little weight on her tiptoes. The pain shoots up to her thigh and she winces, alleviating her foot again so that it’s hovering midair.

For a brief, embarrassing moment she thinks of calling the girl in and asking her to carry her, but the second she considers it she notices a pair of wooden crutches leant against the side of her bed.

Clarke adjusts the crutches beneath her armpits and limps to the window, where on the other side of the glass and below the girl, in a clean red flannel and black skinny jeans, brings down an axe to a piece of wood,  _thump_ , and the pieces fall from their perch on top of a stump and to the ground,  _clatter._

Again and again Clarke watches her bring down the axe to pieces of wood, non-tiredly tracing the - apparently - very human ripple of her forearms and the very human sweat gathering at her temples. Eventually, though, her legs begin to ache at the strain, and she shuffles away.

Her bag is on the floor, by the door. She walks past it and out of the room, intending to explore the house a bit while the girl- Lexa, Clarke remembers- is busy outside.

It’s cramped, a narrow path between the wall and the stairs’ railing, three doors squeezing three different rooms in, including the one Clarke was just in. She tries the first door, to her right, but its locked. She goes over to the other side and tries the third door; the knob turns with a click.

Clarke pushes the door open slightly and quickly returns her hand back to her crutch before she loses balance. The room is dark, so she maneuvers herself so that she is leaning most of her weight on one crutch and trails her hands along the wall to find the light switch.

She flips it on, and when nothing happens, she flips it off and then on again, once, twice, before she remembers: the first wave, cars and other vehicles crashing into each other and into buildings, watching from her classroom window with Octavia by her side, phone dangled uselessly from her hand, as an airplane crashed from the sky, Raven explaining,  _massive EMP strike- that’s an electromagnetic pulse. Shorts out all forms of technology and anything that runs on electricity._

She hadn’t been in an actual house in so long that the sense of normalcy had let her forget. She readjusts her crutches beneath her armpits and steels herself.

The descent down the stairs is pure torture, but she gets through it. The front door is right in front of her, but it’s closed and she can see that the back door leading from the kitchen is open, so she heads there instead. That’s her excuse, that the closed door is too much of a hassle what with her juggling her crutches, but the truth is that as she limped down the stairs she’d realized how hard it would be to survive out there and was hoping the girl would stop her.

She isn’t about to beg, though.

“I’m leaving,” She announces, bag strapped to her back and gun tucked into her jeans. Her crutches sink into the grass one at a time. “Thanks for the bandages.”

Lexa stares, the axe raised above her head. When Clarke only offers a raised eyebrow she abandons it to follow in her wake.

“Where are you going?” She pants.

“Somewhere,” Clarke sighs. “To find my friends.”

“You’re injured,” the girl stops in front of her, blocking her path.

“Oh really?” Clarke snipes. “I hadn’t noticed.”

“Stay,” the girl finally says. It’s so abrupt and sincere and unexpected that although Clarke had hoped for the word she refuses to accept it.

“What?”

“Stay,” the girl repeats. “I haven’t spoken to an actual human in what feels like years. It’ll be good. For both of us.”

Clarke shuffles in place, acting indecisive. “Fine,” She says, “I’ll stay. Just for a few days.”

“Until you’re healed,” the girl amends.

“A few days,” Clarke glares. She turns around sharply and limps back into the house.

-  
-

Lexa drags in a chair for her and putters around the kitchen, cracking eggs onto a pan and pouring water into a kettle.

“How’d you get the stove to turn on,” Clarke asks warily.

“I‘ll show you some time,” Lexa smiles, and at the nice sight and the long forgotten smell of coffee Clarke’s wariness dissipates. 

-  
-

They sit across from each other at the dining table, Clarke moaning, unashamed and loud, into her food and Lexa’s ears tinging bright pink at the tips.

“What’s your story, Clarke?” Lexa asks.

Clarke’s spoonful stops halfway to her mouth. “How’d you know my name?”

Lexa continues eating, “A book fell from your bag,” she says.

Clarke’s sketchbook. She’d carried it everywhere for a year, kept on carrying it even after the invasion. Her name was embossed on the cover in expensive print.

“Don’t touch my shit again,” She threatens.

“Okay,” Lexa looks up at her. “Whatever you want, Clarke.”

The repetitive sound of their spoons hitting their plates grate on Clarke’s nerves until she breaks.

“Why are you like that,” She asks, unwilling to sit in the tense silence that had enveloped them. “You let me hurt you, let me yell at you.”

Lexa refuses to meet her eyes, shoving a large spoonful of eggs into her mouth.

“Were you like that?” She presses. “Before?”

“No,” Lexa croaks out. Clarke waits for more but it doesn’t come.

“I wasn’t like this before too,” Clarke volunteers, smiling when Lexa meets her eyes. It feels oddly momentous.

-  
-

Lexa sits her down on the couch- an actual couch. Not a single tear, no cotton sneaking up from beneath the fabric. Clarke sinks into it with a smile, as docile as she’ll ever be, full belly and stomach still warm from the coffee.

She lets Lexa take off her sweatpants, so that she can change her bandages. There is a blank TV positioned right across from her, and if she closes her eyes she can almost trick herself into thinking she’s back home, with her parents or her friends, watching her favorite show after a full meal.

“Do you like to read?”

Clarke forces her eyes open. Lexa cleans the blood on her thigh with a soaked tissue, still hell-bent on avoiding eye contact.

“I didn’t use to,” Clarke admits. “I always preferred drawing. But now... well, you know.”

Lexa hums. “I can bring us books,” she says hopefully. “We can read?”

“Okay,” Clarke smiles. “Bring me something romantic. You know, one of those dumb young adult novels.”

“Okay.”

Lexa finishes bandaging Clarke’s leg. Then she just stands by the couch uncertainly, hands clenched by her sides.

“I’ll make us coffee,” Clarke prompts her, eyebrows raised; Lexa bounds up the stairs, three at a time.

-  
-

Clarke thought reading something light and stupid would be best for her but now she thinks she would’ve preferred something darker, like maybe crime. As a consequence she’d been sipping at her coffee more than she’d been reading, half thinking of braving the stairs to get her sketchbook.

Lexa is much more engrossed in her own book, the pages turning much more frequently than Clarke’s. Clarke leans a bit to the side, trying to glimpse the contents inside. Lexa notices immediately.

“Do you not like your book?” She asks. “I can bring you a new one.”

“No,” Clarke rolls her eyes. “No, it’s fine.”

She goes back to her book. Her fingers tap against the spine in a precise pattern. She sips at her coffee. Tap, tap, sip. Tap, Tap, sip. Tap, Tap—

“Would you like me to read to you,” Lexa interrupts again. Clarke glances over, intrigued.

-  
-

Lexa’s voice lulls her into a drowsy existence. It hadn’t registered in her head before, that she was in the company of another human- but now it hits her full force and it makes her strangely soft. She ends up with her head in the girl’s lap, Lexa’s fingers combing through the knots in her hair tentatively. She falls asleep like that, safe and cradled, sobs caught in her chest, teeth nipping at her tongue for the leftover taste of heavenly coffee.

_ii._

“I’m only staying for a few more days,” Clarke reminds her, though she is loath to leave the place.

“Why?” Lexa looks up at her, tapping at her thigh to signal she’s done. “Do you have somewhere to go?”

“Not somewhere,” Clarke sighs, leaning her head on the back of the couch. Lexa settles in next to her, imitating her movement. “I promised my friends I’d go back for them.”

“I’ll pack you coffee,” Lexa tells her. She’d grown too attached in the two days they’d known each other, but she couldn’t help it. “And I’ll pack you a pan. You can make it on a fire.”

Clarke laughs along, “Speaking of coffee!”

-  
-

Lexa takes her out to the barn, and it’s crazy. Clarke’s grandmother used to have a chicken coop, and a bunch of plants, but this is to a whole new level. There are cows, a few goats, chickens. It may not sound like much, but in this world were Clarke had scarcely seen an animal except for the occasional deer it’s amazing.

Lexa teaches her how to milk the cows and goats for milk. She chases after the chickens, corralling them into tubs of water and soap where Clarke would wash them for a few brief moments until they escaped her grasp, climbs a tree and drops the apples she picks onto a basket Clarke holds from her safe perch on the ground.

-  
-

There’s a dog house a bit further away from the rest of the farm, and they trudge up the tiny hill on which it stands.

“Dobby!” Lexa calls out once they’re there, and the most miserable looking German Shephard Clarke will probably ever see trots out of the house to sit at their feet.

“He’s been sad,” Lexa bends to empty two cans of solid food into his bowl. “I don’t know what to do.”

Clarke cranes her neck up towards the sky, feeling the blissful rays of sunlight warm her skin. She hadn’t thought this way about the sun in a while. With no air conditioning, and the darkness being the perfect cover from patrols, it had only managed to become a nuisance.

Something cold and wet touches her palm, and she startles as she comes back to Earth. The dog is looking at her imploringly, Lexa a few steps away cleaning out his bowl with a hose.

“Why are you so sad, boy?” Clarke asks, scratching between his ears.

He leans into her touch, eyes closed. It stabs at her, sympathy or empathy or whatever is between. She bends down as much as she can and wraps both arms around his neck, wrestling him into a hug. He huffs, wiggling out her grasp, and she laughs as he dodges her grip.

He trots a few steps away but doesn’t go into his little house, instead throwing his body to the ground and settling his head onto his paw, watching her with big brown eyes.

How is she ever going to leave this place?

“We should take him in.” Lexa sends her a questioning glance over her shoulder. “Dobby. He should come in the house with us.”

“No,” Lexa denies, voice cold.

“Why not?”

“He watches over the animals.”

“Their only threat is the Others,” Clarke says. “And he’ll die if that ever happens.”

“I said no, alright?”

“Fine,” Clarke snarls, turning around and limping back down to the house.

-  
-

It’s only twelve in the afternoon, so Clarke starts pouring some cereal into two bowls along with milk. She sets a bowl for Lexa and sits on the opposite side of the table. It’s devastatingly silent.

“I’m going to take a nap,” Clarke says afterwards. She puts her dishes in the sink and lays in bed, thinking of her friends until she falls asleep.

_iii._

She wakes up the sound of loud barking and a scuffle, nails scratching against wood. She can hear Lexa’s low voice, halfway overwhelmed by the noise.

She gets out of bed, reaches for her crutches and limps out the room. The dog is barking at one of the doors- the one that’s stayed closed since Clarke has first been here.

“Stop Dobby,” Lexa is pleading. She isn’t crying, as far as Clarke can tell- just wiping away the tears as they fall. “Stop,” she yells again, trying to pull him away, but he bites at the air around her and she backs off a bit.

“What happened?” Clarke stays a cautious several feet away, watching Lexa struggle to drag the dog away by his leash.

“Nothing,” Lexa grits out. “Go back to your room Clarke.”

The dog throws himself at the door, again and again, leaving faint scratch marks in his wake. Lexa yanks at his leash one more time and he snaps, spit flying. Clarke can see the red seep out of Lexa’s hand immediately.

The dog calms, leaning down on his haunches and whining in sorrow. “I don’t want to be mad at you,” Lexa tells him, and as if he understands her he whines again, huffing out his nose. “They’re gone! understand?”

She sends him away with a snapped word and he climbs back down the stairs, awkward on his four feet. Clarke rushes forward and grabs Lexa’s hand in her own to inspect the damage. “It’s not deep,” she tells her. “Come on, I’ll patch you up.”

-  
-

“You wanted him in,” Lexa explains later, once Clarke has cleaned the bite wound and started wrapping a bandage around it. “I knew this would happen.”

Her hand curls into a fist and Clarke forces it open by her fingers gently, “Lexa, you don’t have to do everything for me.”

Lexa rips her hand from Clarke’s, standing up abruptly and escaping from the back door. “I’m going to work,” she says.

-  
-

Clarke gives Lexa until sundown before she goes after her, following the sound of faint grunts until she finds her, shoveling a large pile of stinky dirt into a container.

There’s a faint sheen of sweat and dirt all over her, and she’s panting in a way that makes Clarke think she hadn’t taken a single break in the hour between her storming out and now.

“I brought you water,” Clarke tells her, offering the glass with a wry smile. Lexa drops the shovel and when she comes close to take it Clarke recoils, her nose curling up.

“You stink,” Clarke tells her, laughing at Lexa’s affronted scoff.

“That’s because I’m shoveling poop.”

Clarke examines the small container bemusedly. When she leans over it she sees that it leads to a metal contraption down in the ground.

“Why?” She asks, “You making fertilizer or something?”

“No,” Lexa shakes her head. “Well- yes, but electricity too.”

Clarke has no idea what that entails, but she knows one thing. “Raven would love to see this.”

“Raven?” Lexa asks.

“Yeah,” Clarke’s lips twist. “I’m supposed to be looking for her right now.”

“You’re injured,” Lexa states, as if that should be reason enough.

Clarke plops down onto a tree stump to watch Lexa work, and afterwards she coaxes her into visiting Dobby. Once they’ve climbed the hill Clarke calls his name and he trots out of his little house. He sits at Lexa’s feet and she pats him on the head as if it were a great sacrifice. Then they head back home.

-  
-

Clarke opens her sketchbook, brushing past her multiple elaborate sketches and less so doodles until she gets to a specific page.

“This is it,” she says, fingers smudging the charcoal as she traces the methodical lines.

Lexa leans close, inspecting the sketch with a low hum. Her hair brushes Clarke’s cheek and she’d just had a bath so it smells like water and faintly of the shampoo she’d told Clarke she’d stolen from the abandoned grocery shop a few miles away.

“I didn’t have the time to sketch the trail I ran from,” Clarke manages to clear her head enough to continue. “But I tried, afterwards.”

She flips the page to another sketch, this one much less detailed: a path, of what she remembers from when her father had taken her to the camp.

“I think I know it,” Lexa says, ripping her pensive gaze from the paper and settling it on her.

“You do? How?”

“I can take you there,” Lexa says surely.

“You can?” Clarke leans forward. “What about Dobby? And the cows? You really can?”

Lexa laughs, “We can kill the cows. And the chickens. Take their meat with us- for food.”

“Are you sure?” Clarke asks. “I don’t even have a plan. I don’t know if they’re still alive. I’m fifty percent sure _I’m_ gonna die.”

“I’m sure,” Lexa smiles. “We’ll make a plan. And I won’t let you die.”

“You can’t say things like that,” Clarke rolls her eyes. “Odds are I  _am_ going to die. You can’t stop it. Least we can do is die bravely.”

Lexa looks away. “I’ll pack us coffee. Like I promised,” she says. “Remember?”

-  
-

The next day Lexa takes out the last of the steak that’s in the fridge and starts preparing dinner midafternoon, bustling around the kitchen while Clarke hesitantly stands without her crutches, testing out her leg.

“It was barely a graze,” she thinks out loud, “It should only take a bit more than a week until it’s relatively back to normal.”

Clarke rethinks it. “Well, not back to normal. But okay at least.”

Lexa hums, non-committal. Anya’s plants hadn’t survived the waves, but the few which were protected in the greenhouse did. Mainly potatoes. She could make those with the last of the pepper. There’s hope for the melons yet, but Lexa doesn’t think they’ll be here long enough to see it.

“How’d you learn how to cook?” Clarke asks, tentative in the way they’d both taken to communicating when talking about the past.

“I guess it just kind of came naturally,” Lexa says sagely.

“No one taught you?”

“Nope,” Lexa smiles at Clarke over her shoulder. “You want some rice?”

“fuck, yes.”

-  
-

“You think you can brave the stairs now?” Lexa asks. A few hours ago she’d disappeared upstairs, and Clarke had heard a door unlock and shuffling before Lexa had come back down bearing a few maps. She opens Clarke’s sketchbook after an almost pleading look and Clarke nods, cheeks flushing as she remembers how she’d snapped at her for it only a few days ago. Lexa starts circling and drawing lines with a piece of charcoal, and Clarke let her work in silence, already reclined on the couch with her leg alleviated on a soft cushion.

“Why?” Clarke questions. “You gonna let me sleep in your bed?”

The scratching stops. Clarke peaks an eye open to stare at her frozen friend, one hand holding a straight block of wood she’s been using as a ruler and the other paused midway through a squiggly arrow.

“I was going to suggest the other bedroom,” Lexa tries, and Clarke snorts.

“I know- I’m just joking, dumbass.”

Lexa puffs up, affronted. “Mockery is not the product of a strong mind, Clarke.”

“No you,” Clarke smirks, and curls up laughing when Lexa complains that  _that doesn’t even make any sense_  with a disgruntled expression.

“Which room’s mine?” Clarke asks, groaning as she gets up.

Lexa pauses again, her fingers tapping on the map. Clarke doesn’t push her.

Finally, “The one you woke up in.” She says, soft.

Clarke follows the instruction, climbing up the stairs and to the first bedroom. The bed is softer than she remembers, and the sheets are different. She might almost cry as she snuggles into one of the tiny teddy bears perched on the side, but no one needs to know that- especially not Lexa.

_iv._

Lexa plans their adventure to the most miniscule of details. She makes all sorts of weapons, like a wooden bat with nails embedded all around its head, or honest to god stakes like they were about to hunt vampires, or like they could actually make any damage with them if -  _when_ - faced with the Others. She plans their food intake, the things they’d carry, all the possible routes they could take. Their camp sites, the hours they’d rest and the hours they’d eat. Everything she could ever possibly think of.

“You know what I’m really craving?”

Lexa hums over the maps and papers she’s been poring on for days.

“Tequila.”

Lexa wrinkles her nose, finally looking up at Clarke from her position on the floor.

“I know,” Clarke says. “Disgusting.”

Lexa ponders over her list, lips pursed in a pout. Clarke throws an arm over her eyes and waits for her to give it up.

“We can go to the grocery store in a few days,” she offers timidly. “We have to borrow some stuff for our trip anyways.”

Clarke snorts, “You mean steal.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Lexa rolls her eyes.

-  
-

Lexa tries to get Clarke to join her in exercising, but Clarke declines. She just doesn’t think there’s a point in doing so when there’s no way she could overpower the threats waiting for her out there. Instead she settles for watching as Lexa runs around the farm at an impressive speed, dropping to the ground and performing a set of pushups before hopping right back up.

“You have to exercise Clarke,” she pants, bent over with her hands on her knees. It’s been a whole hour and some since she started, which is an entire new brand of crazy she’s just unraveled for Clarke’s eyes. “It’ll be good for your leg.”

“Fine,” Clarke gingerly gets up, ignoring Lexa’s blank, confused stare at her quick compliance, and starts walking up the hill to the side. She turns halfway through to look back at her, flat on her back and chest still rising and falling erratically, and a smirk overtakes her lips as she jogs the rest of the way up.

“Hey boy!” She says, trying out the jovial tone with unpracticed lips. “Hey boy!”

The dog perks his head out of his little house. Clarke spreads her arms out, closes her eyes and imagines she is one of the plants in Lexa’s greenhouse, tilting towards the light. When she opens them again the dog is staring at her, a few tentative steps closer. Clarke turns around, jogs back down the hill, her momentum increasing and the air blowing her hair until she couldn’t possibly stop running. She hears the pitter patter of steps behind her and when she chances a look backwards she sees Dobby running to catch up.

Clarke whoops. “Come on boy!”

He jumps on her back and she stumbles, crashing into the dirt and rolling down the hill. Her breath catches in her lungs and she wheezes, Dobby’s paw pressed against her chest while he licks persistently at her face until she collapses into gentle laughter.

“Clarke, you’re laughing.”

The last of her chuckles trickle out, and all is left is her panting as she looks up at Lexa, standing atop her perplexedly. Dobby’s wet nose nudges her cheeks one last time before he moves away, leaning against Lexa’s legs heavily so that she’d blink out of her haze and scratch at his back.

-  
-

Clarke winces, a shooting pain running up her thigh. Lexa dabs at the wound with antiseptic. “This is the last one,” She tells Clarke. “We’ll have to get some from the store.”

Her hand stays on Clarke’s thigh after she finishes, and although Clarke is hyperaware of the touch she lets her do it.

“I was going to kill him.”

There’s silence, and Lexa realizes Clarke doesn’t know what she’s talking about.

“Dobby,” she clarifies.

Clarke swats Lexa’s hand away from her skin, gasping. “Lexa!”

“I knew you would do this,” Lexa shakes her head.

“You can’t just kill someone once they’re not useful to you.”

Lexa looks up at her, looking genuinely confused. “He’s not human.”

“So what, just because he’s an animal it means you’re superior?”

“Yes,” Lexa blinks. “Anatomically, physiologically, and behaviorally.”

“That’s not what I-“ Clarke groans. “He’s your family!”

Lexa hardens. “My family’s dead.”

“No they’re not,” Clarke insists. “They live inside you, and inside him.”

Lexa rolls her eyes. She begins gathering the contents of the first aid kit and shoving them back inside the box. “If we take him with us, he’ll die. He’s not stealthy, he can’t defend himself. We’d have to carry more stuff, divide our rations even further.”

“He’ll die either way.” Clarke says. The truth sits low in her stomach. “Would you rather you kill him, or someone else?”

“Me,” Lexa answers, no hesitation.

“That’s not the humane answer.”

“If being human means allowing the people you care for get slaughtered, then I don’t want to be human!”

They’re silent for a while, Lexa startled by her own outburst and Clarke feeling helpless in swaying her mind.

“I’m going to kill him,” Lexa says. She looks Clarke right in the eye. “You can’t change my mind.”

_v._

The walk to the grocery store is silent. There’s no easy conversation, no means of connection. All that’s replaying in Clarke’s mind is the fight they’d had earlier about taking Dobby with them on this supplies run - _we’ll make him wear a fucking leash Lexa_ \- but Lexa had stubbornly resisted; and all Lexa can think about is how much she wants to abandon her moral high ground and listen to Clarke, and all that is holding her back from doing so.

Once they get there Clarke shoves numerous bottles of alcohol into their bag: Vodka, Tequila- she even finds a corked bottle of Hennessy, which brings her back to that time she and her friends stole a bottle and she ended up bawling in Octavia’s arms. Those problems she had then seem microscopic now.

Lexa is, annoyingly, much more practical. She heads straight to the silverware isle and inspects the knives, and then moves on to grab a bunch of nails- probably for another bat, Clarke thinks to herself, rolling her eyes.

Eventually Clarke ends up at the pets isle, shoveling a bunch of disgusting ice cream flavored marshmallow she’d picked up earlier on into her mouth. She trails her fingers across a variety of canned food but doesn’t get any of them, instead throwing a bunch of different flavored treats into her bag. He’d appreciate those.

It’s when she’s standing on a two-step ladder and struggling to reach a box of Cheerios from storage, with Lexa leaning on the shelves across from her, her arms crossed and her bottom lip jutted out at her help being refused, that a bird flies around Clarke, buzzing a disturbing tune.

Clarke yelps, the Cheerio boxes fall sideways in a domino effect, and Lexa lurches forward to capture the bird in her hands.

She starts walking to the exit to throw him outside, her face scrunching up at the grating tune it starts singing higher and higher. All of a sudden its wings start to flutter, the sharp edges fluttering against the inside of her hands, and its red and yellow, patchily feathered skin protrudes from between the golden stitching all over its body. Goosebumps erupt all over Lexa’s arms at the sight, and she flings him away from herself, breath stuck in her chest.

It flies back to Clarke, buzzing and fluttering and zooming around her, coming close and retreating as Clarke waves her arms around frantically. Lexa watches from afar, unable to move, or to tear her eyes away from the sight. Her mind plays a loop of the unbearable image of its protruding skin and the harsh stitches separating each lump and the sharp points of its wings scratching at the inside of her palms.

The bird gets close enough to tap at Clarke’s forehead, once and then twice, the skin turning purple almost immediately and a spot of blood appearing in time with Clarke’s yelp. Lexa jumps into action, cursing herself. She takes out the nail bat and growls.

-  
-

“Shit, Lexa! Shit shit shit.”

Lexa jumps the counter and searches the shelves frantically, leaving a mess of empty containers behind, cluttering onto the floor and making a mess of the place.

“Take this,” Lexa shoves two pills —  _doxycycline_  — into Clarke’s hand, who swallows them without question. “And this,”  _gentamicin_ , “and this,”  _streptomycin_.

“Fuck, Clarke,” Lexa mutters, in similar distress. She finds the antiseptic she’d catalogued in her checklist, except now they need it for something much more dangerous than cleaning the graze of a bullet.

She presses it against the bleeding wound on Clarke’s forehead without warning, goosebumps rising again as she recalls the bird’s protrusions. Clarke yelps, recoiling, but Lexa quickly grabs at her chin and inhibits any further movement.

“I’m so sorry,” Lexa murmurs. Clarke’s eyes squeeze shut, the sound of air breathed in and out through clenched teeth audible in the stillness between them, “I’m so sorry.”

-  
-

Clarke wakes up to the loud sounds of crashing and cursing and glass breaking, echoing throughout the house. She groans, her head spinning and a weight pressing down on the lower parts of her stomach.

“Lexa,” she croaks out, but ultimately gives up, thinking Lexa won’t be able to hear her through the noise. But the banging stops and Lexa bounds down the stairs, at her side in an instant.

Paired with the way she stands over her indecisively, fists clenched by her sides, its reminiscent of the first day Clarke spent here, when they’d read a book all through the night.

“There has to be a cure,” Lexa says, eyes wide and frantic with thought.

“Lexa,” Clarke sighs. The words take ages to come out. “There’s no cure.”

“No, no there is,” Lexa drags an armchair over with an impressive bout of strength and plops down, leaning forward with her elbows on her knees. “I was cured,” she whispers to Clarke. “I was cured.”

“What?”

“I was cured,” Lexa repeats, her keen green eyes staring at Clarke.

“Jesus- okay,  _How_?”

“I don’t know,” Lexa admits. “My whole family had it. All of them. And they died. I didn’t. I’m the only one.”

There’s something in her tone, a revelation. Clarke watches her warily.

“What, Lexa?” She ventures.

“I won’t let this happen again,” Lexa shakes her head. She gets up, talking all the while, “I sat through it before. They died, all of them. And I was supposed to die.”

She comes back with six pills, hands them to Clarke and instructs her to take all of them. “Do you trust me?” She asks, sitting back down. She waits for Clarke to swallow the pills and takes her hand, holding it between two of her own. This touch alone grounds her.

“I don’t know, Lexa,” Clarke tells her. “You confuse me.”

“We can get a cure,” Lexa leans forward, “and we can save your friends, all at once. Just trust me. Okay?”

“Okay,” Clarke sighs.

_vi._

If they leave him, he’d think they abandoned him. He’d wander around alone, miserable, and after some time die of hunger- a slow, torturous death. There’s no other alternative.

Lexa zooms in on him from behind the sniper’s scope. Her fingers tremble the slightest bit and she blows out a breath, waits for it to steady.

Her mother loved that dog. She found it as a pup, woofing softly from underneath a car, shielding itself from a heavy bout of rain. Her father welcomed his unexpected arrival with open arms, and Lexa’s siblings all followed suit.

Lexa’s adjusts the sniper more carefully on her shoulder.

She remembers watching her younger siblings be enthralled with his presence for weeks until it grew old, and Lexa and her older sister were tasked with taking care of it alone. She’d feed him every meal, and Anya would bathe him every few weeks, and every day Lexa would marvel at his uselessness, at flourishing solely because another species has decided to take care of him.

Kind of like her, in a way. She could accomplish so much, do so much, and she knew it. But these people - her family - held her back, and she let them. She allows them to care for her and feed her and educate her on subjects much below her skill level. She might’ve not understood it, but it was love that drove her to do it; love and patience, knowing that one day she will meet her true people.

The red dot focuses on his head. She’s up on the roof, about 153 feet away from her target. It’s as impersonal as it gets, much like her other victims.

They can’t take him with them. He lacks stealth; he’d reveal their position indubitably.

Lexa breathes out.

If they do manage to get to the camp undetected, they’d have to leave him outside and tie him up. He’d think they abandoned him, which just takes them full circle. Worse, he’d be captured eventually, and probably strapped to a bomb and sent for kill. If not injected with a plague and sent to infect, just like that horrible bird from earlier.

Her finger settles on the trigger. The tremble is gone.

vii.

Clarke’s flu symptoms kick in as Lexa had expected. It unsettles her, but she pushes through- shoves it so deep inside of her that no one could ever find it. She packs their things and she constructs a plan and she makes sure Clarke takes her pills. They might not be doing anything, but just the act of it gives Lexa calm.

She stops by Dobby’s grave, just before they go. Presses one hand against the stone briefly before turning around and marching out of the estate, following the wish whoosh of Clarke’s blonde hair in the slight wind and wrapping an arm around her when she notices her shiver even though it’s one of the warmest days of the month.

There’s no grave for her parents, or her two sisters, or her little brother. There’s only the house and the phantom of their voices calling her name, but she’ll be too far away to hear them now.

-  
-

Lexa would’ve gotten through with this much faster if she were on her own. She wouldn’t need to stop at night to sleep, and her legs wouldn’t keep shaking from a plague masquerading as a fever. The trip to Camp Haven would take a few days at most, and Lexa couldn’t squash the part of her that thought of Clarke as a bug; or, even worse, an inferior human, weighing her down.

_viii._

They  _are_  slower, and they take much more breaks than needed, and even though she fights it Clarke reminds her of her family during their last few moments, weak.

But as they light a fire, and Clarke lets her pull her closer for warmth, she can’t deny the feeling that this is much better than being alone.

-  
-

The sun sets six times by the time they reach a nearby camp deep in the woods; the one Clarke escaped from. The camp used to be surrounded by a wooden fence and had some watchtowers around the edges. Now the buildings have crumpled and are merely piles of stone and rubble. The result of the explosion Clarke had told her about; the one set off with the intention to level the camp and any remaining adults still alive in it. Get the children and get out.

A wooden sign greets them at the front, declaring the camp ‘Camp Ashpit.’ Lexa chances a glance towards Clarke but she is as resolute as ever, marching past the sign with her arms wrapped around herself. Lexa has to jog to keep up.

“Wait,” she whispers, tugging on Clarke’s wrist to get her to stop moving.

“What?” Clarke snaps.

“There might be patrol.”

Clarke frowns, shaking off Lexa’s hold on her hand and taking out her handgun. Lexa moves on ahead of her, prowling from base to base and peering in cautiously. Clarke waits until she’s almost out of sight before going off on her own.

She walks a familiar trail, past where cabins used to stand and where tents were set up, past the remains of the fence and out of the camp.

There’s a stream near the campsite, one that Clarke’s father never let her drink from like the other kids, out of fear that it would be contaminated; either from chemicals or sewage or, more Other-ly level, a few dead bodies upstream. Maybe even poison.

The Others like doing that. Birds that aren’t birds. People that aren’t people. Soon they’ll change the fucking air.

Instead her father would hike them up the interstate and they’d grab a bunch of water bottles from the gas station. They’d always make sure to leave at dusk, when drones are scarce. Once night falls, you’re dead.

It was during one of those hikes, when Clarke was carrying as many bottles as she could and her father was staring at the broken fridge that used to hold the fizzy drinks longingly, that they heard a sound like a truck driving up the sandy road. That in itself was worrying— cars don’t work anymore, not since the first wave.

They both shared a look before Clarke dropped the bottles and hurried for the door. Jake held her wrist to stop her and suggested that maybe they should wait a little before they go back. Just in case.

“Raven’s there,” Clarke had tried to reason. “Octavia. Bellamy. If something happens to them—“

“Okay,” Jake sighed. “Okay.”

He’d given her a gun, then. The one she’s carrying with her right now.  _It’s a big responsibility_ , he’d said.  _It might not seem like it, with everything that’s going on, but it is, okay? Be careful._

And then they’d heard an explosion. 

Everything happened so fast.

They both ran to the camp. Her father was shot in the head, right in front of her. Her gun fell from her hand. She was seconds away from a swift death when Bellamy showed up, shot the Other with her own gun, gave it back to her, and then ran after the bus that carried his sister while she ran, like a coward, the other way.

More stuff happened. Clarke accidentally killed a fellow human, just completely shitting on her father’s last words. Then karma bit her in the ass and she got shot.

Lexa found her. She got the plague. And now she’s back here.

And now she’s back here.

-  
-

“Where’ve you been? You worried me,” Lexa pulls her into a hug, her arms wrapping around her back gently. She pulls back noticing how unresponsive Clarke is. “You okay?”

“Yeah, fine,” Clarke says. She wraps her own arms around herself. “Did you find them?”

Lexa’s brows furrow. “What? The patrol? There wasn’t any—“

“Not the patrol, Lexa.”

Her facial expression clears. She shuffles in place a bit hesitantly. Clarke waits.

“Yes,” Lexa says. Then she turns around and keeps walking.

Clarke follows, apprehension rising to flood her up to her throat. Her headache, ever present for the past week, levels up to a blinding migraine, throbbing like a second heartbeat.

Lexa looks back at her, sensing her struggle, but other than a displeased twist of her lips she doesn’t say anything.

  
“They’re in here,” she says after they’ve walked to the very end of the camp. The building, a small metal box, is untouched by the bombs that destroyed everything else. Like they left it just for this purpose.

It stinks of the smell of decomposing bodies.

Clarke walks in.

-  
-

“Are you okay?”

Clarke’s fingers curl into an angry fist under the watch of Lexa’s curious gaze. “Just shut up,” She says shakily. “Please. Shut up.”

Lexa stands still and stoic by the entrance. She watches, Clarke sinking to her knees, her back to Lexa, noise coming out of her mouth like she’s crying. She lifts a hand to caress her father’s cheek. It’s definitely ashen by now. There aren’t any bugs anymore, except for the occasional cockroach; no insects, either. And these bodies have been in a metal box for months, so natural decomposition hasn’t had a shot at working with them. Although maybe the bacteria in their intestines did.

“I want to burn him.”

Lexa shakes her head. She tries not to let on what she’d just been thinking. Clarke would be disgusted by her. Anyone even a little human would.

“I’m sorry Clarke. The fire would be a dead giveaway.” Lexa tilts her head, tries to think. “We can bury him?”

Clarke crouches on the floor, her elbows on her knees and her hands over her eyes. Maybe Lexa said something wrong.

“Okay,” Clarke breathes out, after Lexa spent what felt like an eternity in doubt of herself. “Okay. Go find a shovel, please. I need a moment.”

Lexa scours the place until she finds one in a relatively intact watchtower all the way on the other side of the camp. She takes her time going back.

_ix._

“I never went back for my family,” Lexa admits. She’s shoveling dirt back into the grave diligently, still tireless even after so long. She wouldn’t let Clarke help.

“When they got the plague, I drove them to the care camps. A doctor tested me, said I didn’t have it and let me go. They wouldn’t let me back in to say goodbye. I didn’t even try. I just left.”

“I knew they would die.” Lexa scoffs, the shovel now digging into the ground with more force than before. “I knew it would be the last time I’d see them. I didn’t care.”

Clarke swallows, watches the pain blow over Lexa’s face even as she tries to repress it, evident in the way she breaks between sentences and the angry ripples of her forearms. Revels, shamefully, in knowing that her pain isn’t alone.

“You’re a good person, Clarke. Going back for your people.”

-  
-

“You’re not a bad person Lexa. You know that right?” Clarke asks later, once night has fallen and they’ve burrowed into their sleeping bag, Clarke cuddled into Lexa’s shoulder for its faithful warmth.

 _I am not human,_ Lexa wants to say to her.  _My people massacred yours. I caused that limp you have from the bullet wound in your thigh. I’ve shot bullets before that. I killed people. I caused your plague. Nothing I do will repent that._

“Is this about Dobby?” Clarke asks softly when Lexa doesn’t answer, her eyes burning a brand into Lexa’s cheek, her fingers doing the same where they’re twisting into her shirt.

It’s so quiet Clarke thinks she can hear the stars scraping against the sky.

This is what the Others want. Complete silence, so they can replace it with their own noise.

“I don’t want to talk about it, Clarke.”

The silence started before the first wave, when the motherboard had just arrived— hovering ominously 250 miles from Earth —and they were all unaware of its intentions for ten days. Ten, silent days, before Clarke’s phone stopped working, and Octavia’s iPod stopped playing music through her headphones, and an airplane crashed into the trees visible from the window in Mr. Pike’s classroom. Before half a million people died at once, and before that number was later put to shame.

“Well, I do.”

_x._

Clarke once told Lexa that she doesn’t have to do everything for Clarke; so Clarke doesn’t make her talk. Instead she makes her listen, and she apologizes.

“I’m sorry I made you feel like shit for wanting to spare him,” She tells her. “The food, the couch and the books and the farm and  _you_... It made me forget. Alright?”

Clarke blows an exasperated, hot breath onto Lexa’s neck.

“It’s different now. We have to make choices we didn’t have to before. So. When we’re in there... If it comes to me, the cure, or my friends. You have to make the right choice. Okay?”

“Clarke, I don’t know—“

“You know,” Clarke holds Lexa’s cheek firmly, hovering above her. “You know. Tell me.”

“Your friends,” Lexa starts, continuing with Clarke’s encouraging nod. “You—“

“No,” Clarke’s fingers dig into Lexa’s cheeks. “The cure can save us. All of us, not just me. My friends, the cure, me. Say it.”

“Clarke-“

“Say it,” Clarke says sharply.

“Your friends.” Lexa exhales, her entire body shivering. “The cure. You.”

Clarke eases the tight grip of her fingers, moves their faces closer together. She thinks to kiss her, to follow the alluring dip in the middle of Lexa’s bottom lip with her tongue, to explore all the different kinds of tenderness the girl could offer — but with the intent of not making the decision harder on Lexa than it already is she settles for a soft, strong _thank you_ instead.

**Author's Note:**

> if you like this check out my other fic (hogwarts AU) :)) thanks for reading!


End file.
